My fiance and I got together two years ago. I got pregnant shortly after we got together. Instead of leaving me, as I assumed he would, he stayed with me through the pregnancy and helped me find adoptive parents.
After the adoption, I suffered a lot of postpartum depression. Our sex lives dwindled down to nothing. Sometimes I wonder if I'm even attracted to him anymore.
Other things:
-He can be pretty disrespectful. He expects a lot from me - for instance, he expects me to do all the cooking and cleaning, even when he isn't working obscene days, because I "know how to do it" and he doesn't (he was coddled as a child and so wasn't taught how to live apart from his mother) - and doesn't respect my religious or philosophical beliefs (I'm a neopagan, and he's an atheist who doesn't know what to think about feminism). Sometimes he mocks my religious beliefs or gets angry about the fact that I do things that match up with them, like leave offerings and perform rituals.
-His parents show the same tendencies. His mother, in particular, is very controlling. She emotionally abuses him by saying things like "if you end up homeless, you can come home whenever you want to". His father's an angry drunk who attempts to control us with money.
-He's not very good in bed. He's pretty large (you know), squeamish about oral/anal/fingering, doesn't understand why lube is a good thing, and lasts a very, very long time. I enjoy kinky things (I've been in long-term relationships where anal-only was pretty boring/vanilla), and when I ask him for these things, he makes promises but never actually follows through.
-Sometimes, when I'm not doing what he wants me to do - more on that later - he throws early-morning (meaning 6 AM) tantrums until I get things done. I usually go to work at 11.
-He's also a very loud sleeper. He snores a lot, he kicks in his sleep, and he likes to invade my space (which he calls "cuddling," but it doesn't feel that cuddly to have an elbow in your shoulder). This means I often don't get to sleep until 2 AM.
-He then says that I should "go to bed earlier" to accommodate his early-morning tantrums and wakeup habits.
Some blame on my end:
-I'm not very good in bed anymore, either. I'm heavier than I used to be (because I had a baby and then had to recover from surgery obtained in order to have the baby), I don't have as much energy anymore (because depression), and my needs have changed a lot since I gave birth.
-I'm somewhat messy. I keep things hygienic (do laundry, wash dishes, clean out litterboxes, clean bathrooms, clean refrigerators), but I've never been good at keeping things Martha Stewart clean.
-My parents are the exact opposite of his - negligent and not involved in my life at all. I usually go more than a year between visits with my mother (who's a very distant parent and always has been), I haven't seen my father in more than two decades, and my stepfather's an asshole. My fiance had someone constantly nagging him to get things done, so that's what makes him feel safe and loved. I feel safe and loved when I'm left to my own devices. I don't respond well to direction or authority as a result (though for some reason I manage to keep jobs, do well in school, and stay out of trouble, which is more than I can say for many in my situation), and being shoved into doing something makes me angrier than anything in the world. He does have a point when he says that the only way to get me to do something is to yell at me, because I can be pretty lazy and stubborn.
-I resent him a lot for getting me pregnant and then forcing me to choose between getting an abortion (which I didn't want because of my religious beliefs) and putting the baby up for adoption (which ended up being incredibly painful for me) because of his parents' disapproval. I agree that adoption was the right choice, but I would have liked to come to that decision on my own, and I resent being shoved into it while I was pregnant and terrified. He resents me because I'm not entirely over it yet. I resent him because he has no idea what this kind of hormonal upheaval can do to someone's brain chemistry. He resents me because I can't get treatment for it (because getting treatment for it would cost us lots of money that we don't have). The resentments pile up, and we can't do anything about it, because couple's therapy is prohibitively expensive.
-I came out as bisexual when I was 14; however, I'm starting to see that this may have been a ploy on teenage!me's part to keep my conservative Christian family's approval. I enjoy sex with men, but my relationships with them are rarely healthy; my current relationship is the healthiest relationship with a man I've ever had, and it doesn't even come close to some of my better relationships with women. I'm coming to the conclusion that I may be gay... but I also may subconsciously resent him for everything, and I may be forcing a false comparison on him that wouldn't exist with a woman (it's significantly less likely that a woman would accidentally get another woman pregnant, after all).
-I'm almost entirely financially dependent upon him. I'm working minimum wage, recovering from childbirth, going to school half-time to avoid repaying student loans, and attempting to repay hefty medical bills. Breaking up seems like a terrible option, and even if it's not, I'm scared I'm just running away from my problems, and from this person who's really been there for me during a really trying time.
I also read about the problems in this sub, and I realize they sound petty. Can someone give me some perspective?
TL;DR: Fiance and I are suffering some pretty intense problems that we can't get therapy for because of a lack of insurance, some of which include an unplanned pregnancy, postpartum depression, abusive families, and putting our baby up for adoption after I gave birth. I feel that my issues are petty and that I resent him for things that aren't his fault. Heeeeellllp?
Submitted September 13, 2016 at 11:34AM by redwineandspindles http://ift.tt/2c5sjaa relationships
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